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For, Vignaneswara himself does not claim for the father an absolute power of disposing of moveables at his own pleasure, but only an 'independent power in the disposal of them for indispensable acts of duty and for purposes prescribed by texts of law, as gifts through affection to the support of the family, relief from distress and so forth."

There does not seem to be really any distinction as between the moveables and the immoveables in so far as the father's power to make a gift is concerned. The gifts could be only through affection with reasonable limits. Gifts to brides on Occasion of marriage as also gift by the father to his daughter on the occasion of the marriage of a small portion of ancestral immoveable property have been held to be valid. Whatever the father is permitted in discharge of his indispensable duties in satisfaction of his moral obligation cast upon him by the texts, must be within reasonable limits and must be a small portion of the family property. Therefore, there can be no indiscriminate gifting away of joint family property by a father and the question is whether such a gift is void or only voidable at the instance of a coparcener.

 

 In --  'Rottala  Ranganatham   Chetti  v.   Pulicat
Ramaswami Chetti',    27   Mad 162    (C),   a   Full
Bench  of  this  court  observed  that it has been
definitely settled by judicial decisions that it was
incompetent to an undivided member of a Hindu
family to alienate by way of gift his undivided
share or any   portion   thereof,    and   that   such
alienation was void 'in toto'. 
 

8. A similar question arose in -- 'Venkatapayya v. Raghavayya', (D) where a gift deed was executed by the plaintiff for himself and on behalf of his minor son in favour of the defendant conveying an item of joint family property and a suit was instituted by the executants themselves stating that being a gift of joint family property the deed of gift was void and praying for a declaration that the gift was not true and was not valid in law and enforceable, the court found in favour of the invalidity of the document as one in the nature f a joint family property, which conveyed no title whatsoever to the defendant. Raghava Rao J. who decided the case, referred to the earlier decisions on the subject and observed that the well-recognised common law maxim that a man shall not derogate from his own grant had no application to a case in which the personal law of the parties rendered altogether void a grant by him which must therefore be treated in the eye of the law as altogether 'non est' and there being no rights created by a void transaction of that kind there was no estoppel or any other kind of personal bar akin thereto which precluded the plaintiff from asserting his right to recover.

9. It is now well-established that a Hindu father has no power to gift away ancestral and joint family property in part or in whole except for the special purposes laid down in the text, which are limited and circumscribed and that too of small portions of moveable and immoveable property, mostly to discharge a necessary moral obligation cast on a Hindu father or manager of the family. A gift otherwise is void in its inception and a document evidencing such a gift does not convey any interest to the donee. The gift can therefore be ignored and persons entitled to the property can treat the property so gifted as continuing to vest in the joint family and not haying been transferred to the donee notwithstanding even that possession of the property may have passed to the donee. It is not necessary for a coparcener or any other member of the joint family who claims to have a right or interest in the property to Interdict a gift as an alienation not binding on the family but to ignore the transaction and sue to enforce his or her rights to the said property.

10. It is, however, contended that in the present case the gift has been made with the consent of the coparceners and is therefore perfectly valid. Though a gift of coparcenary property is not as such recognised even if it is by the entire body of coparceners, a transaction evidencing the gift of ancestral property to which all the coparceners were parties cannot, however, be attacked as void 'in toto' as all the coparceners that claim to have an interest in the property must be deemed to be parties to the gift and the gift does not become invalid as the interest of any other person is not affected by such transaction. Therefore, there cannot be any real difficulty in upholding a gift with the consent of all the coparceners the gift being to one of the coparceners themselves of a property of the family or even to a stranger or charity provided nobody's interests are affected. To support the validity of such a gift, there should not certainly be any minors or a child in the womb existing on the date of the gift.